Writers in the Library will host a reading by poet Bobby Caudle Rogers at 7 p.m., Monday, April 4, in UT’s Hodges Library auditorium.

Bobby C. Rogers won the 2009 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize — one of America’ s most distinguished awards for a first book of poetry — for his collection Paper Anniversary. He is a professor of English at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, and a Distinguished Alumni of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He was a Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, from which he received his M.F.A.

Rogers’ poems have appeared in the Southern Review, the Georgia Review, Image, Shenandoah, Puerto del Sol, and numerous other magazines. He is the recipient of the Greensboro Review Literary Prize in Poetry and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception in the Mary E. Greer Room (258 Hodges Library) will follow the reading.

Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Department of English and the UT Libraries. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (865-974-6947 or mkallet@utk.edu), or Jeff Daniel Marion, Writer in Residence, UT Libraries (dannymar@earthlink.net).

Writers in the Library will host a fiction reading by Kevin Wilson at 7 p.m., Monday, February 14, in UT’s Hodges Library auditorium. There will also be an informal Q&A with the author and literary agent Julie Barer on February 14 at 3 p.m. in 1210-11 McClung Tower.

Wilson is the author of the short story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009), which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award. His fiction has been featured in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, and elsewhere, and has appeared in four volumes of the New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best anthology. Ecco will publish his novel, The Family Fang, in the summer of 2011.

Wilson lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his son, Griff, where he teaches fiction at the University of the South and helps run the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Department of English and the UT Libraries. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (865-974-6947 or mkallet@utk.edu), or Jeff Daniel Marion, Writer in Residence, UT Libraries (dannymar@earthlink.net).

Fans of fiction and poetry will have plenty of opportunities to indulge their passion this spring. UT ‘s John C. Hodges Library will be the site of numerous events featuring authors reading from their works.

Still to come in the Writers in the Library series of readings are:

• poets Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root
Monday, February 7

• Kevin Wilson, author of Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, a collection of short fiction
Monday, February 14

• poet Bobby Caudle Rogers* – latest book: Paper Anniversary
Monday, April 4

• poet Jane Sasser – latest book: Itinerant
Monday, April 11

• student winners of creative writing awards in fiction and poetry
Tuesday, April 19 (undergraduate winners at 7 p.m.; graduate winners at 8 p.m.)
(1210-1211 McClung Tower)

All Writers in the Library programs begin at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library Auditorium (with the exception of the April 18 reading by student award winners).

Other readings in the Hodges Library include:

Jessie Janeshek* reading from her just-published first book of poetry, Invisible Mink, on Monday, February 28, 7 p.m., in the Mary E. Greer Room (258 Hodges Library). This is a “Coffee and Magpies” event (i.e., cupcakes will be served).

The “Milk and Ink” series, featuring women writers who are also mothers, includes these readings in the Mary E. Greer Room (258 Hodges Library):

Libby Falk Jones and Tomi Wiley*, poets
Monday, March 7, 7 p.m.

Connie Jordan Green* and Deborah Scaperoth*, poets
Monday, March 21, 7 p.m.

John Hoppenthaler will read his poetry on Wednesday, March 23, at 7 p.m. in the Mary E. Greer Room (258 Hodges Library). His books include Lives of Water and Anticipate the Coming Reservoir.

* DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI. Bobby Caudle Rogers was awarded the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Connie Jordan Green received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Knox County Friends of the Library in 2008. Several authors have new books: Invisible Mink, by Jessie Janeshek; Heart Language, by Deborah Scaperoth; Milk & Ink: A Mosaic of Motherhood, co-authored by Tomi Wiley.

Husband and wife poets William Pitt Root and Pamela Uschuk will be the featured authors at the next Writers in the Library. Uschuk is the Hodges Visiting Writer in the UT English department this semester. Root is a distinguished poet with a long literary career.

The poets will read from their works on Monday, February 7th, at 7 p.m., in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Pamela Uschuk is the author of numerous books and chapbooks of poetry, and her work has appeared in over three hundred journals and anthologies worldwide. Uschuk’s latest book of poems, Crazy Love, won a 2010 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Also in 2010, two individual poems were recognized with prizes: the New Millennium Poetry Award for “Shostakovich: Five Pieces” and a Best of the Web award for “A Short History of Falling.” Other literary awards she has received include the Struga International Theme Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Daniels Writing Award from the National League of American PEN Women, and the 2001 Literature Award from the Tucson/Pima Arts Council. Uschuk teaches creative writing at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and is the director of the Southwest Writers Institute.

William Pitt Root’s collections of poetry include White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West, The Storm and Other Poems, and Trace Elements from a Recurring Kingdom. His work also has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Recognition of Root’s work includes three Pushcart Prizes, the Stanley Kunitz Poetry Award, the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships, and repeated Pulitzer nominations. He had the unique distinction of being the first Poet Laureate of Tucson, Arizona. His poems have been published widely in such places as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Poetry.

Root has been a Poet-in-the-Schools and visiting writer at schools and universities from coast to coast, as well as teaching writing to students on Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Tohono O’odham, Navajo, Hopi, and Wind River reservations.

The work of both poets has been translated into multiple languages, and they have performed and taught at writers’ workshops around the world. The couple live in southwestern Colorado outside of Durango, where they enjoy the outdoors and their beloved animal companions.

Jesmyn Ward will read from her work at Writers in the Library, 7 p.m., Tuesday, January 25, in UT’s Hodges Library auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Ward’s debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds, tells the story of twin brothers Joshua and Christophe, who take very different paths as they embark on their adult lives. Joshua finds a job working as a dock laborer on the Gulf of Mexico. But Christophe, unable to find a job and desperate to alleviate his family’s poverty, starts to sell drugs.

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi, a small Mississippi town near New Orleans, and Where the Line Bleeds makes palpable her deep knowledge and love of this milieu: black, poor, drug-riddled, yet sustained by strong family ties and a sense of community.

The novel has received rave reviews and plenty of awards. Publishers Weekly calls the book “starkly beautiful,” and Ward “a fresh new voice in American literature.” Where the Line Bleeds was First Runner-up for the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Cabell First Novelist Award in 2009 and a finalist for the 2009 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction. The novel was also an Essence Book Club Selection, one of the Pennsylvania School Librarians’ Top Forty Fiction Titles for Young Adults, and recipient of a 2009 Honor Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Ward was the first person in her family to attain a college degree. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan and the B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University, where she was awarded a Stegner Fellowship in the Creative Writing Program. She currently teaches fiction writing at the University of Mississippi, where she is Ole Miss’s Grisham Writer in Residence.

Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Department of English and the UT Libraries. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (865-974-6947 or mkallet@utk.edu), or Jeff Daniel Marion, Writer in Residence, UT Libraries (dannymar@earthlink.net).

Award-winning Georgia writer Dana Wildsmith will continue this year’s series of authors reading from their works in UT’s Hodges Library.

Wildsmith will read from her poems and essays at the university’s Writers in the Library event, 7 p.m., Monday, November 1, in the library auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Wildsmith is the author of four books of poems and one book of nonfiction. Her most recent collection of poetry, One Good Hand (2005), was a SIBA Poetry Book of the Year nominee. Her nonfiction work, Back to Abnormal: Surviving With An Old Farm In the New South (2010), references her life on a 150-year-old farm outside Bethlehem, Georgia, and her discomfort with encroaching urban sprawl.

“I think my sensitivity to language came from Daddy being a preacher and a scholar,” Wildsmith said. “He was a very intellectual man. He made me value taking care of what you say — a precision of expression — and learning how to paint pictures (with words) because that’s what preachers do.” She began with the genre of poetry “because it is so close to singing, and singing flows more through my veins than blood does, and also because poems are short — I was busy with a small child and trying to get an education.”

Having lived a nomadic life as the daughter of a Methodist minister and, later, the wife of a Navy man, Wildsmith now relishes the natural surroundings on the farmland purchased by her parents upon her father’s retirement, and even the relative austerity of her chosen lifestyle. In a 2009 essay, she wrote of the converted cotton barn in which she lives and her mother’s newer but equally modest house across the road:

“Neither house has central heat or air. Mac has offered to install a heat pump to cozy up Mama’s house through the winter and cool it off through Georgia Julys and Augusts. Mama always thanks him, and refuses. Central air doesn’t fit the soul of an old house, she tells him. The house itself would not be at ease with such. Most of the year, both houses stand open-windowed and open door to the outside weather. We rely on ceiling fans and old sheltering trees to keep the heat down. Come winter, we have poured-glass windows to let the sun enter as wavy rainbows of warmth. We also almost always have thick layers of dust or pollen over our floors and furniture. You can’t let the intangible outside in without allowing the tangible, too.” (New Southerner, Spring 2009)

Wildsmith has served as artist-in-residence at Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming, Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, and the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, and has been a poetry fellow with the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She has taught writing workshops throughout the Southeast, and currently teaches English as a Second Language to adults of many nationalities through the Adult Education Program of Lanier Technical College in Oakwood, Georgia. For more information, visit www.danawildsmith.com/.

Wildsmith’s reading is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Department of English and the UT Libraries. For further information contact Jeff Daniel Marion, UT Libraries Writer in Residence (dannymar@earthlink.net) or Martha Rudolph, UT Libraries Communications (mrudolp2@utk.edu).

The Writers in the Library reading by poet Suzanne Cleary, originally scheduled for October 25, has been CANCELLED. Writers in the Library will attempt to reschedule her reading at a future date.

Watch www.lib.utk.edu/writersinthelibrary/ for scheduled readings.

Poet, novelist and essayist Marge Piercy will read her poems and chat with the public next week in Knoxville.

Piercy will read from her work The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems of Ritual and Remembrance, at Temple Beth El of Knoxville, 3037 Kingston Pike, at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 17. On Monday, Oct. 18, she will host an informal author chat from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1210-1211 McClung Tower on the UT Knoxville campus and will present “Poetry of Jewish Identity, a reading” in the University Center auditorium at 7 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.

Piercy was born in Detroit, was educated at the University of Michigan, and is the recipient of four honorary doctorates. She has been a key player in many of the major progressive political battles of our time, including the anti-Vietnam war effort and the women’s movement, and more recently has been an active participant in the resistance to the war in Iraq.

A popular speaker on college campuses, she has been a featured writer on Bill Moyers’ PBS specials, Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” Terri Gross’ “Fresh Air,” the “Today” show, and many radio programs nationwide including “Air America” and “Oprah & Friends.”

Piercy is the author of 17 books of poetry, including The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme, and 17 novels, including He, She, and It and Gone to Soldiers. She has published stage plays, a book on the craft of poetry, and a memoir, Sleeping With Cats.

Sponsors include the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund, the Ready for the World international and intercultural initiative, the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies, Writers in the Library, the UT Commission for Women, the Sisterhood of Temple Beth El of Knoxville and Heska Amuna Synagogue.

For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, UT Department of English (865-974-6947 or mkallet@utk.edu).

Claudia Emerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and the current Poet Laureate of Virginia, will read from her work at Writers in the Library, 7 p.m., Monday, September 27, in UT’s Hodges Library auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. A reception in the Mary E. Greer Room (258 Hodges Library) will follow the reading.

Emerson’s four books, Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997), Pinion, An Elegy (2002), Late Wife (2005), and Figure Studies (2008), were published as part of Louisiana State University Press’s signature series, Southern Messenger Poets, edited by Dave Smith. Late Wife won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Crazyhorse, New England Review, and other journals. An advisory and contributing editor for Shenandoah, Emerson has been awarded individual artist’s fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and was also a Witter Bynner fellow through the Library of Congress. She was awarded the 2008 Donald Justice Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Emerson is Professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at the University Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Claudia Emerson’s reading is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Department of English and the UT Libraries. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (865-974-6947 or mkallet@utk.edu), or Jeff Daniel Marion, Writer in Residence, UT Libraries (dannymar@earthlink.net).

Writers Andrew Farkas and M.O. Walsh will open the year’s series of authors reading from their works in UT’s John C. Hodges Library. Farkas and Walsh will read from their recently published collections of short stories at 7 p.m., Monday, September 13, in the Hodges Library auditorium. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Andrew Farkas’ first collection of short stories, Self-Titled Debut, won the 2008 Subito Press Prize for Experimental Fiction. His work has appeared in such journals as The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Pank, New Orleans Review, and Harpur Palate among others, and he appears regularly in The Brooklyn Rail. He holds an M.F.A. from the University of Alabama and is working on a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

M.O. Walsh is a writer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His first book, the story collection The Prospect of Magic, won the 2009 Tartt’s First Fiction Award. His work has appeared in publications such as Oxford American, American Short Fiction, and Epoch and has been anthologized in Best New American Voices. He currently teaches at LSU where he lives with his wife Sarah, daughter Magnolia, and dog Gus.

Both Farkas and Walsh earned M.A.s in English as part of the Creative Writing Program at UT.

The September 13 event is the first reading in the 2010-2011 John C. Hodges Distinguished Creative Writers Series. The series honors the same UT English professor of 40 years, author of the Harbrace College Handbook, for whom the Hodges Library is named.

Readings will be emceed by Jeff Daniel Marion, the UT Libraries’ new Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence, a poet and longtime creative writing teacher. The full schedule for this year’s readings is available at www.lib.utk.edu/writersinthelibrary/.

Additional University of Tennessee sponsors for the 2010-2011 series are Writers in the Library, the Better English Fund, Ready for the World, the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Judaic Studies Program, and the Commission for Women.

For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (865-974-6947 or mkallet@utk.edu), or Jeff Daniel Marion, Writer in Residence, UT Libraries (dannymar@earthlink.net).